Disliked Elements, Mechanics, and Tropes

General
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How’d you like that silver?

And like JBento was saying, just a small blurb about check odds would be nice, like:

“If you have X skill of 30% or less, you can only do simple tasks that check X skill (example: You can mix two chemicals, but won’t know what they do, and you can’t go any further than that)

If you have X skill of 40 - 60%, you can perform more intermediate tasks that check X skill (example: You can now mix more complicated concoctions and memorize their formulas)

If you have X skill of 70% or higher, you can perform expert level tasks that check X skill (example: You can now create your own formulas, and any mixtures you make have double effect)”

Just, you know, something like that - and it doesn’t have to be for every stat, just make it a blanket thing on its own tab that players can reference when they need to.

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That makes a lot of sense - hopefully it would give players more of a sense of the risk they’re taking when they pick an option.

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Kinda remind of a problem a lot of CoG games have: There’s very little indication of how ‘difficult’ any given task is supposed to be and often the check requirement are arbitrary and more related to how far into the story you are than how difficult the task at hand is.

Like lifting a house in chapter 1 could require a strength stat of 10 but lifting your own sword in the last chapter could require a strength stat of 80.

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There’s one CoG WIP I know of where a lot of the stat checks are this whole complicated equation - it’s rarely ever just a matter of the stats, on their own, being checked, it’s more often like, “if you have X relationship with person Y and an A stat of 55, OR if you have an A stat of 75 and a B stat of 50, OR…”

On the one hand, it’s giving you a bunch of wiggle room to decide how you want to approach a problem that best fits your character, which is great, but it also presents the issue that, obviously, you’re not going to see any of this outside of code reading, so in casual play, you have no reason to suspect that so many things are being calculated all at once, which makes it even harder to tell what you need to be focusing on. And this is shaping up to be one of those games where the consequences for failure HURT, to boot. If getting a game over is annoying when it’s just stat checks, then getting a game over because both my stats and my relationships were out of sync and I had no idea which one was the bigger problem would drive me up a wall.

Games like that, I think it would benefit for there to even be a note letting you know, “stats on their own are all well and good, but how much you get along with the people around you also plays a part in things. The higher your relationship with certain characters, the more likely you’ll be able to bank on that friendship in a tight spot!”, that would be great. Could put it on the same page as the stat check explanation, make it its own paragraph.

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So I’ve been playing Breath of the Wild (again - what? I like that game), and I got to the part where you get the Master Sword.

I’ll put what happens in spoilers in case people haven’t played the game or otherwise don’t know this part of the plot already: One hundred years before the start of the game, when Calamity Ganon destroys Hyrule, a badly beaten up Princess Zelda returns a completely ruined Master Sword to its pedestal at the base of the Great Deku Tree. It glows an ethereal light as she does so. One hundred years later, Link pulls a mysteriously pristine Master Sword out of that same pedestal. This is an unspoken hint about the holy powers the Master Sword possesses, that it’s able to repair itself to brand new condition from having been just short of broken in half. In another cutscene found elsewhere in the game, Link is shown holding off an enormous onslaught of Guardians that Ganon has taken over, with nothing but the Master Sword and the shirt on his back. When you go to the spot where his big dramatic last stand happened in-game, you see a PILE of dead Guardians littering the field, which is another hint about the Master Sword’s powers, as it becomes exponentially stronger when facing down elements of the Calamity.

These two details would have made for incredible visual storytelling, and could have added a whole layer of mystique as to why it’s so crucial for Link to go and get the sword… but Nintendo, being Nintendo, just could not stand the idea of not handholding the player for two seconds, and I immediately get told exactly how the damn thing works, like I’d be too stupid to infer the details for myself otherwise.

To come to my point: I can’t stand when stories feel like they have to explain every little thing to me. Not every mystery needs to be solved, sometimes it’s fine to let the reader have just enough details to be curious, and then leave the answer vague on purpose. I love me some worldbuilding, don’t get me wrong, and I’ve gone on record here before as being one of the weirdos who liked how the first two Bravely Default games (which are Bravely Default and Bravely Second, NOT Bravely Default 2, that game is in fact THIRD in the series - I don’t know why they did that either) would go into exhaustive detail about how weapons and armor and potions and such were made and used, but that’s a separate thing. That’s fleshing out the world, not spoonfeeding me answers to questions that I didn’t need or want answered.

You know how, in the original Star Wars movies, the Force was largely unexplained and people chalked it up to space magic, and then the prequel trilogy happened and said “actually, it’s midichlorians” and people felt like that cheapened the whole concept? Yeah, it’s like that. In fact, this Screenrant article puts it rather succinctly:

“[…] It could be said that Midi-chlorians were a plot device that tried providing an explanation for a mystery that was better left untold. For many fans, The Force worked better when it was left up to the audience to interpret for themselves.”

I’ve largely been discussing visual media here, but this applies to written stories as well - when an author feels the need to pump the breaks on the plot and tell me a bunch of shit I didn’t ask about and don’t care to know if it doesn’t add anything worthwhile to the story, that’s annoying. The second Wayhaven story does this at one point, where Unit Bravo suddenly start discussing supernatural power levels for no good reason, and every single time I’ve gotten to that part of the story, I’ve skipped straight to the bottom of the page without reading it because it’s utterly meaningless in the grand scheme of things. Especially since the story doesn’t even follow the rules it’s establishing in-canon - supposedly, Unit Bravo are on the Bullshit Strong end of the spectrum… except for when they’re not, which usually happens conveniently during big, dramatic fights where the Detective suddenly comes out with a wild sucker punch that nobody, not even the Detective, saw coming. The same Detective, who, in the aforementioned power level discussion, sits somewhere around Crap and Utter Crap.

Just… stop it. There’s no need for every stone to be turned, let some mysteries be mysterious. Especially if you’re just going to turn around and pretend you never turned that stone in the first place, what’s the point, then?

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It’s actually not in ONE point it establishes - that N has two power levels, not one, and that the reason for that makes them very extremely uncomfortable.

By the end of Book 2, this is just the sewer fight. But that’s not a problem with the establishing of power levels, it’s a problem with the sewer scene, which is incredibly (but which I managed to salvage with a few headcanon changes) bad. @EvilChani will back me up on this.

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Zelda games, despite the wide age range of their fanbase, are kids games. They use the kind of storytelling that’s appropriate for a young child because they expect young children to be playing it.

I don’t mean this in an insulting “You like crappy children’s games” way, as a note. Zelda games are, for the most part, good games no matter how old you are. They just have simplistic storytelling because they’re designed for nine year olds to be able to understand them.

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I like to think that this was the entire reason for the whole scene. I just ignore the rest of it, because it just seemed to be rubbing in the MC’s face just how insignificant and weak the MC is. “We’re all gods. You’re an ant.”

And yep, I totally back you up on the ridiculousness that was the sewer scene. I ended up rewriting the entire thing for all four of my MCs because I couldn’t stomach it the way it was written. It made UB look like a bunch of morons, and the Agency look inept (since that’s apparently their MO).

I think @Zyrios is also referring to the b3 demo, too, though. Once again, the “fight” against human bad guys turns out to be a clusterfuck due to poor planning and the only strategy being “pummel them” even when they’re overwhelmed (and the MC is fairly useless in this fight, even when they “win”). Then you have the scene where the MC punches the annunaki in the face.

There is also the M and A sparring scene, where M can’t even hit A once and is incapable of avoiding a single hit by A. M is supposedly a tier 10 but A wipes the floor with him and makes him look incompetent (even though M is typically the one doing the heavy lifting and rushing in to fight every time there’s a real problem). It was a case of Sera wanting to show A as being better than everyone else, to the point where no one can touch them, but it just comes off as ridiculous.

I think the main issue with this (and, honestly, with most fiction in general in cases like this) is that plot dictates what happens, even if it makes no sense. A certain outcome is desired, so characters become inept, weak, or stupid to make sure that outcome happens. It causes inconsistencies that some people can’t overlook. Hell, Wheel of Time (the novels) were rampant with this crap.

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To be fair, doesn’t Nintendo have a policy to keep their Zelda, Mario and Kirby games understandable by a literal 6 years old?

That’s not what happened tho, midichlorians are just how you mesure someone’s sensitivity because they are attracted to the force so the more someone is connected to the force, the more you’ll find. That’s a really bad exemple because it’s a case of people literally imagining the exact opposite of what is clearly said.

Also while I agree with the majority of what you said, there’s a major caveat to it: Mystery doesn’t replace a narrative or world building. You can’t have a dude suddenly show up and one shot one of the main obstacle of the story and when asked ‘WTF was that?’, respond with ‘I wanted to let it vague’ cause it’s a pretty important information to understand everything else.

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Sometimes authors just want to show/tell something so bad that they forget the premises (such as characters’ personality/skills) they had written before and check if they match.

Allow me an allegory:
A story shouldn’t bee seen as a puppet show, it should be more like taking care of a garden or a living been: you can decide certain aspects while taking care, but most of the growth will have to be natural

EDIT @Dragomer as someone who is writing certain parts intentionally vague and mysterious allow to answer:
If it’s one or two disconnected scenes, I think TV tropes call them “big alligator moments”, I kinda agree: it’s lazy at best, bad writing at worst.
However, if I use a recurring theme, wich seems to have rule/understanding when it doesn’t, while being coherent with what I’ve written… It should be working, I think.

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I’ve had this conversation with my writing partner. He views characters as pieces on a chessboard, but if he wants the knight to move diagonally 20 spaces, he does it (his chessboard, so he can break the rules) and we argue because you can’t write a character that way unless you’re just doing plot-driven drivel (which is fine, but I don’t like that kind of story because I am in it for the characters).

I’ve actually explained it like you did, that we create a foundation for a character, then plant the seed and they grow on their own (as their “god and creator” we can throw obstacles at them but we can’t force them to behave in a way that makes no sense to who they are). He’s finally beginning to listen but, when characters are being difficult and not doing what’s needed, he automatically wants to resort to his chessboard metaphor… then we argue again, lol.

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This is an interesting conundrum because, of course, in reality a story is a chessboard/puppet show which the author has complete control over. It might feel like your characters have minds of their own and as the author you’re just setting them loose and watching them go, but this is an illusion; the reality is that you can make your characters do whatever you want whenever you want, and if you’re skilled enough you can foreshadow so that any apparent personality shift makes perfect sense in context.

So I’d say you and your writing partner both have a point: he’s right in that the characters are entirely under your control at all times, but you’re also right in that if you want a character to do something that doesn’t suit their established personality you’re going to have to very carefully construct the circumstances in which they do it or it will break the immersion.

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Yeah, this doesn’t work for me when I write. I may want them to do certain things, but when I’m writing, there are times they just won’t do what I want. Part of it is that, when I’m writing, I will create the character, make the foundation for them (with a partial past) and then kind of let them develop on their own. I may throw things into their past if I see them developing in a way I didn’t expect (or hell, sometimes they do it), but I can’t force them into doing something that is outside of their nature/personality/thought processes. I can try to force them along a path because I fully control what happens in the character’s external world, but even then, the way I view it, I have to keep to the rules within the world I created.

Example: In the novel my buddy and I wrote, the main MC (there are a few who are mains, really) has latent powers, but the extent of her power is limited. Toward the end, she has an enormous display of power that is simply not workable in the parameters of how much she can manage, which means either we could ignore it and have her do a one-time massive display (then have her go back to not being able to do that and try to come up with some plausible reason for it) or we had to give her a power boost of some sort. We couldn’t justify her being able to do it without the latter (it was breaking our own rules, which even my writing partner was unwilling to permanently break or change) so we went back in and weaved in things that built up to her doing this, and gave her an item (and connection to a god) that allowed her the power to do it. And then she goes into a coma because her body is unable to handle that power.

Another example: My buddy is more of a screenwriter and likes to have flashy things happen. He had a car flying through the air for no reason. I pointed out that cars don’t just go flying around because someone bumps them (this isn’t Forza, with flying beetle bugs, after all), so we worked in someone who has telekinetic powers doing it. Still got the result we wanted, that worked within our world, without breaking characters or our own foundation to do it.

Another example, this time from WoT and many other novels I’ve read: In trying to make one character look smart/strong/soft/whatever, authors make all of the other characters behave stupid/weak/cold/whatever to show how great the first character is. It’s like they aren’t capable of showing a character’s intelligence (for example) unless everyone around them is behaving like they have a single-digit IQ and can’t think their way out of a box. This is completely immersion breaking for me and, worse, it’s pissing all over characters that had, thus far, been built up. Then, they expect me to believe these characters that acted like morons are smart two scenes later. Nope. Sorry.

I don’t think it’s about skill to foreshadow. I think it’s more about understanding how human minds work (and the minds of your non-human characters, if that’s where you’re going). You can’t really foreshadow characters doing things that make the reader go, “what the fuck is that? that’s the stupidest thing I’ve read!” So, you can either accept the fact that readers will think it’s stupid and nonsensical within the world you created and acclimate themselves to the fact that plot will dictate character, or you can find obstacles for the characters to make them go a way you want, while allowing them to still respond in ways that make sense for their character.

In the end, people who write will do so in different ways. Some go the chess piece route and don’t care if they break their own world to get what they, as the author, want to happen. Others write like me, which is more of a roleplaying POV, where you let the character take over and try to interject where necessary in hopes they will respond appropriately. And, if all else fails, you throw in another character to help things along.

From a reader aspect, it’s really just a matter of preference–but given how I view characters, I tend to roll my eyes when I see plot forcing the character. I get why some writers do it, but I don’t like it and it ends up making me dislike the characters who behave antithetically to their nature for no other reason than the author’s whims.

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That’s part and parcel of why I dislike the Souls games’ method of storytelling, where you get told enough to let you know that there is a plot, but you’re expected to work out the finer details yourself with whatever scraps of lore you can find in the game world. Everybody praises that as the apex of storytelling, and I have no idea why. It’s literally the opposite problem: instead of telling too much, I’m not being given enough.

And to the comments about Zelda games being for kids, I get that, believe me. I’m not saying that Nintendo SHOULDN’T dumb down the plot for youngsters to understand easier. But I feel like even little kids could understand the meaning behind the Master Sword magically repairing itself and leaving a trail of specifically Calamity enemies in its wake. And in a game where you wake up after being dead and your ultimate objective is to make your way through a blasted hellscape of a town in order to get inside the equally ruined castle to take down an ungodly abomination, and where one of the major quests is hunting down the memories of the main protagonist which, again, give you the broad strokes without laying out the entire timeline in excruciating detail, thereby leaving certain details up to the imagination, I feel like “it’s a game for kids, it’s supposed to be simple” isn’t a good enough counter argument. Same with Zelda 64, whenever you play as adult Link, Hyrule is in a horrible shit state of affairs, everybody is literal zombies and ghosts thanks to Ganon ruining everything in that timeline. Not to imply that little kids can’t stomach horror, but I feel like if we can trust them to handle zombie apocalypses, then we can expect them to be able to handle purposeful mystique.

Even in stories for kids, the authors don’t always explain everything in plain black and white, and that’s just fine for a youngster’s imagination. It’s never outright said why Clifford becomes a big red dog in those books, it just happens and everybody rolls with it, with the most obvious explanation being the implication that a little girl wished for it to be so, and then it did. (More specifically, she was worried about Clifford being so small as a puppy and hoped he would grow up big and healthy, which the universe took to mean, “Make him a kaiju, you got it, boss,” because even in kid’s stories, the hands of fate are a strange and terrifying Eldritch force.) If I had been outright told that Clifford got bigger through magic or science or some shit, that would’ve ruined my childhood right then and there.

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Okay, now I’m curious. What book is that? I want to read it.

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What, the Clifford the Big Red Dog books? They’re a series of kids books that focus on the adventures of the titular big red dog (who is roughly house-sized). The very first book, Clifford the Small Red Puppy, is the origin story for how he got beeg, and it’s literally an overnight transformation.

And in the case of Bloodborne, they can’t even do that because the local church invested too heavily into Eldritch abominations and now the world is irreparably doomed.

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I’ll add my bit to this :

In my opinion Souls games have very poor story, but great Lore.

To clarify, i consider “Lore” as what happens before player starts playing, all the Npc backstories, world building and general events. But story is events that player is directly involved in.

Now that it’s clarified. Souls story is essentially “Some random faceless, nameless murdehobo wakes up in a world where the interesting shit has already gone down. Is given some nebulous task to unfuck the world.”

I find that extremely lazy, storytelling. Sure lore is deep, but why not let player see that themselves, not just read about from some random shoe.

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I agree and I think they did a good job fixing that to some extent in Elden Ring.

And yeah, it was never good narrative storytelling, people just mistake that and ‘creating an interesting vibe while playing’ which it admittedly did.

Fair enough.

IIRC the reason he got so big was officially ‘She loved him so much, it made him like that’, kinda like a plant treated with love tend to grow big or something.

Technically, Yarnahm is fucked, the rest of the world is just dealing with a disease that it has the cure for.

If anything, the bad end is for said Abominations since by the end of the game, no solution has been found for their problem (AKA having children without issues).

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MFW my dog lays in the sun because he needs photosynthesis to live

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I’m going to have to agree with @EvilChani in that discussion, which is strange, because we pretty much disagree on every other discussion on story mechanics that has taken place in this forum.

If a character suddenly does not behave like that character*, it’s… bad story-telling. It’s not like I find it IMPOSSIBLE to write that out-of-character stuff, but it’s incredibly forced, it feels wrong, and it becomes impossible to continue the story with them because those actions aren’t build-uponable. It breaks the entire writing flow for me.

When I write, the question to “what happens next?” is easy to answer, because it’s ALWAYS “the characters behave like the characters”. But if a character doesn’t behave like that character, then “what happens next?” is only answerable with “anything, really, because it’s not like anyone can trust the story to make sense, anyway, so whatever”.

*stuff like mind-control and impersonators excluded, obviously

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